Marina Laswick made quite the impression on Josh Caddy.Source:Instagram

Thankfully Josh Caddy puts a bit more thought into his footy than he does with his tattoos.

The Richmond star was a guest on The Footy Show on Wednesday night and explained the motivation behind a bizarre tattoo on his lower left leg.

The artwork is of Instagram model and beauty blogger Marina Laswick, who Caddy liked the look of enough online to get inked on his body for eternity. The pair are now literally inseparable.

“It’s just an Insta famous chick that I went and got a tattoo of,” Caddy said, much to the amusement of the show’s panellists. “I went to Richmond, I had to fit in.”

And what does Caddy’s girlfriend have to say about his tatt?

“She hasn’t said much about it. She’s probably not happy,” he said. “I like it but I don’t think I’ll get any more.

Footy Show host Neroli Meadows said what every viewer at home was thinking when she pressed Caddy on why Laswick — who has more than 700,000 Instagram followers — won out over every other subject. Of all the possibilities, why her?

A drunk Eddie Betts was locked in a jail cell, thinking his AFL career was over.

“Someone else was in the corner, laying on the hard bed,” he said on Thursday. “He had a blanket on him and he was shaking.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’

“At that point, I thought it my career going to be over.”

Betts now considers his 2009 arrest not just a turning point in his footy career but his life.

He had a gambling problem. Much of a wild childhood had been spent boozing and stealing. He didn’t have much of an education.

“I really didn’t go to school,” Betts said.

“I could read and write but it was just, I reckon, about a year seven level when I was 18.” But he’d always had footy.

“AFL footy basically saved me,” he said.

But his 2009 bender with teammates at Carlton, the club which drafted him five years earlier, threatened everything.

Betts was arrested around 2am on a Sunday in Melbourne’s central business district, jailed for a short period and fined $234 by police. Carlton fined him $10,000 — the maximum allowed under club rules. A Melbourne newspaper splashed a photo of Betts, cigarette dangling from his mouth, on the front page.

“I looked at that and said, ‘That’s not me’,” Betts said. “It kind of slapped me in the face a little bit because I don’t want people to see me as this person on the front page.

“I had to give my life on track. And I guess that’s where I really started to snap out of it.”

Betts is the most exciting small forward in the AFL.Source:Getty Images

His wife Anna was pivotal.

“She’s my rock, Anna, she is the most important person in my life,” Betts said. “We set some boundaries down, just to try to be a professional athlete.

“And she guided me and told me that I’m a role model to a lot of people and you have got to start growing up and start taking responsibilities for your actions.”

Yet three years after his arrest, Betts and his other true love — footy — fell out.

“I just really hated coming into the changerooms and meetings and doing all that,” he said.

In October 2012, Anna and Betts had their first child, Lewis, who changed the footballer’s outlook on his sport.

“Going home, win or lose, just to see the smile on Lewi’s face … it really brought the joy back into footy,” he said.

Adelaide soon began circling Betts, who supported the Crows while growing up in Port Lincoln in South Australia.

At the end of the 2013 season, Betts accepted Adelaide’s offer and left Carlton. “I didn’t want to leave — I cried for two hours after,” he said. “Then I went home, sat down with Anna and said, ‘Am I making the right decision?’”

Now a father of four, Betts believed if he didn’t move to Adelaide, he would have burnt out after two more seasons in Melbourne.

Instead he’s about to play his 300th AFL game on Sunday, in his sixth season at the Crows.

Steve Larkin, AAP

SURGERY FOR WOUNDED CROW

Sam Jacobs will be out of action for a while.Source:News Corp Australia

Veteran Adelaide ruckman Sam Jacobs has undergone knee surgery and will miss the next six weeks of the AFL season.

The 31-year-old hasn’t played since hurting his right knee against Sydney in round two.

Jacobs had surgery on Wednesday to fix a meniscal problem and faces a four to six-week rehabilitation program, the Crows say.

“We expect Sam to progress quickly through the next four-six weeks of rehab and be back to his best,” Adelaide’s medico Steve Saunders said in a statement.

The Crows will be forced to rely on novice Reilly O’Brien to lead their rucks in the absence of 198-gamer Jacobs, who has been a mainstay in Adelaide’s line-up since crossing from Carlton at the end of 2010.

AFL players to watch in 2019

Take a look at our top picks for who you should keep a close eye on in the AFL for 2019.